


a study in fours: first

by iosis



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen, M/M, almost purely platonic. almost., the boys are on a mission to Noxus, the mission doesn't go as planned...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 23:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14904557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iosis/pseuds/iosis
Summary: Most of the times Jhin has killed were, of course, performance; fewer were driven by pure ascetic necessity. For the sake of someone else? Never. Never particularly fond of duets, before. Not aesthetically or morally opposed to, no, just. Not his favourite.Perhaps, he would muse to himself later - perhaps this was because he'd never found anyone worthy.





	a study in fours: first

**Author's Note:**

> When Jhin first came out and Varus's entire lore was still just 'Tragic Sad Vengeance Dad', i came up with an entire manifesto as to why and how they'd get along really well. for Varus, Jhin could be a good Ionian ally in the anti-Noxus quest as someone far from bothered by moral reasonings for violence; for Jhin, Varus is a true enigma, an artwork of another entity, complete with a melodramatic back story and an interesting method of execution. It's platonic mostly, really, with slight undertones of something more surfacing up here and there - Jhin's careful artistic appreciation notwithstanding...
> 
> How their paths would cross and how their strange alliance would form is best fit for another story, but the thought of Jhin killing out of need to protect in lieu of as performance has been on my mind for quite a while, so here we are...

 

 

 

 

The battlefields are where his flower blooms the brightest.

 

It takes a while to get used to, performing alongside another. Isn't something he 's rehearsed before, or even considered, really. Having someone else in the spotlight beside him, the constant awareness of space occupied by pure strength and deadly grace - a half-serious picturesque relief that they stand like this not as enemies but as allies, and something not terribly far from awe.

He was never particularly fond of duets, before. Not aesthetically or morally opposed to, no, just. Not his favourite.

  
Perhaps, he would muse to himself later - perhaps this was because he'd never found anyone worthy.

 

Not once had he thought the flower to be a challenger to his master plan, an agent caught up in plotting its rebellion - yet he was always so much more than just a static piece of scenery, than something willless and passive like an outcome long predetermined. But then again, hasn't he known from the moment he first laid his eyes upon him that this was someone different? A masterpiece of his own entirely, a cruel, forsaken beauty in the intricate work of another that he couldn't begin to perfect or replicate?

Not a limitation to his artistry, no. There was simply no need for it.

It was refreshing, back then, a surge of creativity, something exciting and new - as little as a glance at someone revealing so much more grandeur than within the usual tasteless arrangement of flesh and blood and colour; so much more than a canvas so thoughtlessly neglected -

(Someone who once looked upon the aftermath of his, Jhin's, performance, and instead of shrinking away in disgust had only shrugged and said, 'We all need something to pull us through', someone who never once denied him the things he sought for comfort - the things admitted not even to himself. Someone whose own comfort seemed to be staring up at where stray sparks from the campfire raced to reach the stars, weary limbs stretched out before him, his hair left free to stream down his shoulders.

  
He would talk, then. He would tell him of his family - the one he grew up with, and the one he loved the most - of villages draped in green that haven't known how to suffer before clouds came from the south.

It was not straight away that Jhin learnt of a place that didn't belong in this world, that held horrors older than the world itself - older and tenfold more powerful.

It was the other that told him of it, the other that spoke as well, sometimes, though the change in voice and mannerism was near impossible to detect at first. And the thing that lurked within, the soul behind this masterpiece- was it a soul? Had it a soul? He knew not, for it never showed itself; yet sometimes their gaze would meet within the dusk suspended over fires, over the skies of Noxus, and Varus's eyes would glow with a light that couldn't have been born amongst mankind.

(Jhin hasn't had to associate the word 'beautiful' with things not of his own creation before.)

 

 

Still, watching Varus fight might be his favourite spectacle yet.

Where he himself depends on careful planning and colourful execution, perfectly timed to each stroke of four, the flower is entirely different. Curt and efficient – frugal, almost, if he daresay (he does; he tells him on a regular basis, furrowing his brow in mock distaste underneath the mask. Still, it is endearing in its unapologetic straightforwardness.)

Where the Virtuoso himself values every motion as part of his routine – every step, ever bow, every extension of a hand (armline, it's important to complete the armline) – Varus never takes unnecessary movements. When the performances are extended or where they encounter unexpected audiences, his shoulders tense, hands trembling ever so slightly, muscles working to keep up with the demand to keep firing, to keep conjuring flames of light between his fingers, phantom callouses from a phantom tether.

  
He’ll deny ever feeling tired afterwards, when he would dress his wounds and water will cleanse away the blood on his hands but not the exoskeleton of crystal. Jhin wouldn’t be fooled so easily. He’s watched him fight enough to start noticing.

 

He notices when it's different, too.

 

Varus never takes pleasure in killing. Fulfillment, yes, a grim satisfaction, a bitterness characteristic of all who live on vengeance - but there is no joy in it for him, no sadism. Hell, the man wouldn't _hunt_ outside of necessity, and Jhin hasn't bothered to keep count of all the meager border guards and tradesmen and innkeepers whose lives were spared by the eternity of 'Can't you just let it go this one time' and the teasing 'Is a small catch like this really worthy of your art?' and the simple but deadly 'Please?'

It so happened that the thing within him didn't share this humanitarian sentiment.

When tendrils of corruption bleed out from underneath his fingers and wipe out Noxian batallions by the dozen, when arrows hail from the sky and shatter the ground all around him, when crystalline armour glows the colour of blood and the very air stands suspended around him - who is it that stands before Jhin? When his movements grow erratic, when he waltzes through their enemies and among their screams of death Jhin swears he can hear laughter - who is it that he becomes?

It's beautiful, it's vibrant, and it reminds Jhin that he, too, is a creature to be ruled by fear.

(Later still, he will meet the boy wielding the terror no other could master, and after that - the Darkin blade of war, but even they will not instill the same fear in him. If he knows by then that it is more than his own safety he wants to see preserved, that he worries for, he admits it to none.)

Not human, not _yours_ , something you could never fully understand or replicate - a thing of nightmare stronger than your craft and the craft of others and all things in Runeterra. Lay Runeterra to rest if it were ever to fully awake, the hell with it - but what of them? What of _him_? It's a gnawing anxiety at the back of his mind, an unnerving shroud of doubt that tears at something within him, cold and sharp, following him across the Noxian border like a shadow, leaving no peace.

 

 

Strangely enough, all the other aspects of being on the other side of the border - threats of immediate death and hostiles around every corner and all - leave him perfectly calm. Perfectly calm even the night his carefully planned performance goes out the window, the one when a scene caught out of the corner of his eye leaves him frozen in his tracks, Lotus trap falling to the ground, forgotten.

 

It is not often that Varus has to fight close-range. Even less often that he lets himself be caught off guard - for this wasn't the plan at all, the plan was to flank the tiny valley from the stealth and safety of its ridges - rocky and full of caves on Varus's side, slippery with moss and riddled with vines on Jhin's. From all their gathered intel, the Noxian reinforcements were meant to pass through the valley as one singular troop, one singular line even, and those who did were an easy target reduced to nothing but bodies cooling in the ground - but how did they manage to get behind him? Worse, how did they manage to come close enough for Varus to take up the dagger, bow discarded?

The flower is skilled with the blade - his movements remain methodical as ever, and in the setting evening the steel gleams the same phantom violet that shrouds his hands. The sight of him like that is almost enough to make his breath stutter, but that doesn't matter right now. What matters is that without the bow, without space to use the bow, Varus is not much more than an extremely skilled fighter. One attacker falls to the ground, another; then another comes down with a sweep of his great curved blade at an angle that leaves Varus struggling to block it, and the clang of metal echoes between stone walls as they lock together in a silent struggle.

This alone isn't enough for unease to set in - with this alone,Varus would have been fine, he's never not been fine - but there's more and more silhouettes morphing out of the slope above him, gunpowder grey against a fading sunset, a dull reflection caught in something raised above their heads. It's hard to tell exactly what from this far away, but the gesture of taking aim is a memory committed to his muscles and his hands and his very being and he doesn't need to see more to know their weapons are in no way melee.

It's not that Varus cannot fend off an attack like this - he's seen it before, crystalline matter forming around him to encase, to protect from an onslaught of bullets or arrows alike. It's a matter of seeing, of reacting fast enough, of knowing what's to come. The flower's attention is elsewhere, and there's just so, so many towering above him, all different angles and guns at the ready and intent to kill burning up the sky.

 

When this scene will become memory, it will be full of colour, an extended narrative of an affair where every sound and scent and vision brim with a timeless kind of life; a memory that drags on for what feels like hours. He doesn't know how much time actually passes - just that it couldn't have been more than a few seconds to take in and process the situation, to hear the alarm bell of imminent danger at the back of his head, calm or not.

Couldn't be more than a few seconds before the Noxians open fire.

 

There’s not enough time to get close enough for Whisper to do deliver like he always had, not enough time to call out to Varus, to give a sign on warning. A warning shot to shatter evening air, if only to get his attention? Too dangerous, too much risk when one slip of the other's concentration could cost him his life. What, then?

Not enough time, not enough range, not...Hell, he isn't even sure if there's enough power in his beloved weapon’s blow to take out more than one per shot, and now uncertainty itself is taking up time, precious moments slipping into emptiness like promises of Ionian peace.

How long until the first shot, how long now?

 

_Release the breath held without realisation._

_Don't think. Don't think, just count._

  
  
Four seconds.

 

One second for his hand to drop down to his hip, fastening coming undone before he makes contact,

 

Three.

  
  
The rifle comes into place with a click that says home, the cloak falls on the ground, discarded among moss and grass and pretense - and his fingers map out slender ornaments of the machine that has become part of him in a way that almost feels novel, though Jhin isn't sure why.

 

Two seconds.

 

It is not Jhin's eyes that take aim but his body, for his body has always been one with this, one with his art; and at that moment something stopped fitting together within that confession of the self but it doesn't matter right now because one second and his knees lock into position and his fingers meet the trigger and then the count starts all over.

 

_One._

 

Two shots hang in the air, a residue of gunpowder and desperation, and the impact of the shot tremours through him.

He misses.

He doesn't need to see the outcome to KNOW he does, to feel it with is very being. There's a cloud of dust and rubble on the other side of the valley so he cannot tell if the same can be said for the Noxian laqueys or if all this would be in vain, but the immovable calm is still there so all he can do is keep acting out the show.

 

 _Two_ \- and there it is, the feeling of a projectile connecting and giving and claiming, the ruthlessness of his craft's exquisite beauty. Screams of agony and fear - ugly voices, all of them, Noxians die as tastelessly as they kill, but Varus's voice is not among them -

 

_Three._

 

\- the methodical click and grind of gears drowns them out, so familiar, so perfect as the magazine takes its final rotation -

 

 _Four_ , and the Curtain Call is complete.

 

(Before he can begin to catch his breath and fully process what just happened, the hover of dust is split open by a flash of violet, piercing and determined, and he knows he's succeeded. _They've_ succeeded.)

 

There's the unmistakable sound of the last body hitting the ground, a sound dull and lifeless - and then there is silence. Just the homely click of the rifle sliding back to its place by his side, and Varus looking at him from where the last of debris and residue are settling at his feet, his expression unreadable through dusk.

 

Strange. Strange that he's still perfectly calm as he leaves his nest of vines and brush and walks towards him, stepping over roots and rocks and corpses alike, Whisper still warm in his hand, cape left forgotten in the greenery.

  
  
‘Thank you,’ Varus offers, and he's alive, alive and well and his arm is warm underneath Jhin's touch and it is only then that the calm changes to an even stranger sort of feeling.

'They weren't supposed to be there.' the artisan tells him, trying his best to keep his voice neutral, but it doesn't come easy.

'I know.' Varus is wiping blood from his dagger on the treacherous stone behind him, bow already back in its rightful place. Jhin swallows, breathes once, twice; then ponders on whether this feeling should be called 'relief'.

  
His companion is just as shaken by what had taken place, no matter how he tries to hide it - and despite best efforts of his own, the Virtuoso knows the awareness is probably mutual. 'Still. It was foolish of me to leave my back exposed.'

'All's well that ends well.' Jhin answers just to say something, just to buy enough time until reality realigns itself and time starts working properly again.

 

Varus is looking at him again with that strange expression he's seldom seen before, something between curiosity and confusion and such very ordinary human wonder, and he isn't sure why. He doesn't question it. Everything is secondary to Varus being alive and well and seemingly collected and habitually dismissive of his own emotions right now. _Everything_ is well.

 

It is only later that he finally decides to poke at this with a cautious 'What ails you?' - later, when they're sitting by the campfire tucked into the depths of a much less malevolent valley, and it's the moments of quiet when it's too early to sleep but all maps for tomorrow already have been analysed, all plans made concrete. The rest of the evening had passed in calm - time taken to cover up their tracks, to peel Jhin's earlier discarded drapery off the mud and clean it off into a state of almost-immaculacy; disposing of the bodies and creeping southward long enough to start forgetting the momentary terrors of earlier. They've done their share of bickering and scheming and sharing a wry joke or two as per usual, but that expression hasn't left Varus's face since.

 

'When we fought, before.' the flower tells him, and he doesn't look at him, turning instead to the fire. He pokes at the coals with a stick - lose embers and particles of ash rise up around him in a restless dance. 'You've saved my life.'

Jhin wants to tell him that of course he had - wants to be the slightest degree of offended that this would come off a surprise. Wants to tell him that even the Golden Demon himself has things worth protecting.

  
'It is of no matter,' He finds himself saying instead.

 

'Killing outside of your performance is of no matter?' Varus throws the stick into the flames, and they crackle at the offering, hesitating not a second to engulf it completely. 'I know what that was, back there in the valley. I know what the act you refer to as Curtain Call looks like, what it means to you. To use it for someone else, unplanned, unstaged...'

  
Varus trails off there, fading into a quietness that isn't entirely unfitting.

  
Jhin is quiet too, delayed realisation suddenly crystal clear, stark in its novelty. Varus is right, just like he always is - yet he hasn't hesitated for a moment when it mattered, hasn't even realised he's gone agains every stage rule, every script he's ever orchestrated. Wouldn't spare it a second though if, Ancients forbid, the same situation would come up again, wouldn't...

  
'Were cliches not every artist's worst nightmare,' - can Varus sense him smiling underneath the mask? A part of him hopes he can. 'I'd remind you there is a first time for everything.'

  
The way the archer's face scrunches up in distaste at that reminds Jhin yet again on this journey that he's done well choosing his alliances.

  
'That's all you come up with?' Varus watches him from beneath white lashes, head cocked to the side.

  
'You've had an entire finale dedicated to you mere hours before!' Jhin exclaims, hand thrown up in a sweep of disdain, and the archer bats it away, muttering something about tincans and melodrama. 'Was that not enough for you?'

  
'On the contrary,' He proceeds to inform Jhin before there's time to take offence, and for the first time for the evening, the smile reaches his eyes.

  
If he has anything else to add after that, he does not voice it, gaze lost in the flames once more, flickering and alive. They're a dancing across his face as Jhin watches him relax into the warmth, eyelids lowering in content - a gesture of trust in its own. 

 

  
He doesn't have to.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love Jhin and Varus dearly but I haven't written either before (or League at all for that sake), so concrit is always welcome.


End file.
